DropBox goes to the office

DrobBox the cloud-based hard drive service with unlimited storage (for a price) offering convenient synchronization between all your devices. You get started with few free gigabytes to get you going and few extra gigabytes when you sign up a friend. It has quickly become the nightmare of IT departments around the world. The zero-barriers entry, ease of use, and ease of sharing files with colleagues, customers and friends makes DropBox the new Trojan horse of IT.

Once again, IT managers have lost another battle in control of the information in their departments. In the workplace people are demanding the functionality of file collaboration and IT is not responding to the call fast enough. It’s not their fault. It is actually quite difficult to build DropBox-like system within a company’s IT infrastructure. Sure, there are commercially available products but the cost and time required to implement them is just too high.

Never fear, IT departments because DropBox is now extending the olive branch (or let’s just say giving you an offer you can’t refuse) by providing the necessary application extensions to be well-behaved in the enterprise. DropBox convinced major corporate IT industry players to go along with their idea. IBM, Microsoft and Dell are extending the functionality of their products by enabling them to use DropBox as a storage medium –> http://g3t.ca/sGlG3q .

This is a huge step for DropBox, considering Microsoft’s own ‘drive in the sky’ is a competitor –> http://g3t.ca/KikwsQ . Thanks to the newly unveiled API (the interface, programmers use to integrate software) new application vendors are hopping on the DropBox bandwagon with their own solutions in droves.

So what is the lesson for IT managers? They need to accept the fact that they can’t build and control everything. It’s better to try to understand how people work and architect solutions which will support it. Cloud storage and file collaboration can be an acceptable solution but maintain the drive to educate people about security and information protection. Instead of managing everything, think more about empowering people. Start thinking about customer-centric IT.

Trending this week…

This week brought us some interesting, note-worthy articles and news:

BlackBerry is back with the Classic. That’s right the device with the original keyboard and buttons. Is it for everybody? No, but the die hards will love it!! –> http://g3t.ca/lKqztw

Iowa is going digital. This state will issue electronic driver’s license which you can carry on your smart phone. –> http://g3t.ca/ghdjyP

UK had a problem with flying airplanes around. Why? The system for air traffic control stopped working. This is what happens when you don’t maintain your computer systems kids. –> http://g3t.ca/hwlJeT

Can you replace a lawyer? Not anytime soon, but you can get him a helper. University of Toronto is building computer system using IBM’s Watson. Its name? Ross. –> http://g3t.ca/M4ePPl

Google is discontinuing its news service in Spain. Spain is changing its laws around intellectual property. The law will allow publishers to charge Google if their content appears on Google’s news website. Google doesn’t want to pay for content, which helps driving billions dollars in ad revenues. –> http://g3t.ca/qgJMu5

Picture is worth of thousands words or even 140 characters. Instagram has now more users than Twitter. It is far easier to take a picture than compose a 140 character thought –> http://g3t.ca/NKR2nC

Do you remember the song Gagnam Style? Well, it broke YouTube, almost. It had so many views that Google had to change the size of the counter. The new counter can go all the way to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 instead of 2,147,483,647 To translate this, so far we wasted more then 17,386 years. Mean time in Africa –> http://g3t.ca/uYww2p

Check out even more trending topics here –> http://g3t.ca/vNv5WL

The past future is here…

In case you missed any of the past issues. Here is the complete archive: http://g3t.ca/GB1jPs